Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Back to Business

Alright enough BS, time to climb. Marbelous!, 4 redpoint attempts so far. I'm feeling pretty confident that it'll go down this weekend. I've gotten pretty comfortable taking 20-30 footers on 1/4- 1/2" cams and it's given me a new confidence in trad gear. I'm just glad this route is as steep as it is. Thank you, Peter for coming out on Monday and confirming the quality of the climbing in the Marble Gully and being a 3rd body out there while I try to go big on Marbelous. I feel this is truly a mile stone route for the Crags and I'll be stoked to bag this FA.Just to give you an idea of what we're working on. 110' of climbing on a slightly overhanging marbled granite wall, discontinuous flakes take you to 3 distinct cruxes, 2 of the cruxes come high on the route after the pump factor kicks in. I'm pictured here at the 2nd crux right before I blew it and dropped about 30 onto a yellow Alien. After making this crux you load up a flake with a green alien and a blue Metolius cam and then traverse left for about a body length, then lunge another 3' to a sloper, mantle up or take a 30 foot swinger. After pulling that crux plug in a black Alien and another shallow blue Metolius and pump up another 20' of 5.11 liebacking to the anchor.Projected rating 13a R (this route has no bolts!).